Free Eleven Eleven by Paul Dowswell

and bones if he crashed to the ground. Flying was a Faustian pact. You had the chance to go up into the air and soar like a bird – but you also faced the fate that British song so vividly promised.
    The drill for take-off was so ingrained Eddie ran through it without really thinking what he was doing. Engine checks, machine gun checks, two twenty-five-pound bombs right underneath him on the underside of the fuselage. Eddie didn’t like having those things on board. If he crashed on take-off, or got hit, who could say they wouldn’t go off?
    ‘OK, let’s get her off. Contact!’ said Eddie, and the mechanic swung the varnished wooden propeller. The engine spluttered into life with a spurt of blue exhaust, and his nostrils filled with the smell of petrol. And as it usually did on the first time, the prop came to an abrupt halt and had to be spun again. As it usually did, this time the rotary engine fired on all nine of its cylinders and Eddie felt an intoxicating power judder through the small biplane. It was like a great beast pulling on a leash.
    That engine had terrified him when he first flew these Camels. The way it spun on its housing – this great lump of gleaming steel whizzing around at 1,500 revolutions per minute. It was like a great big gyroscope and it perpetually tugged the flimsy, wood-and-canvas plane off to the right. If you weren’t careful, that engine would be the death of you. And Eddie was convinced that crashing with the thing spinning around like that was far more dangerous than crashing with a stationary in-line engine.
    But without it, the Camel wouldn’t be half the plane it was. Nothing did a right turn as quickly as a Camel, as many a German pilot had found out to their cost. Left turns were slower – laborious really. But the aircraft was agile, and that was what made it so formidable in a dogfight. If you could cope with its limitations – sluggish above 12,000 feet, slow compared to the latest German Fokkers – you were lucky to have one.
    Take-off was the most dangerous time. A full fuel tank added to the forward weight of the craft and Eddie always felt anxious until the wheels left the ground and the shaking stopped. He gunned the engine, feeling it straining on its housing.
    ‘Chocks away,’ shouted Eddie, and made the usual gesture. He didn’t know why he even shouted. The noise drowned everything out. The ground crew spun the Camel on its spindly wheels, holding on to its tail, safely away from that roaring engine. The machine emerged from the barn and Eddie began to trundle along the bumpy grass to the runway.
    Checking wind direction, and making sure he had maximum length for take-off, Eddie gave the engine a final gunning and then began his run. The wind started to sing in the struts and he could feel the terrific power of the machine at his fingertips.
    This manoeuvre required supreme concentration, working the ailerons, elevators and rudder with hands and feet, and pushing the throttle just so. The torque was phenomenal. As Eddie gained speed, the whole aircraft was wrenched to the right. He set the stick and the pedals to counteract that swing and pulled back the throttle.
    If he got this wrong, he could easily find himself in a high-speed collision with a tree, and then they really would have to take the cylinder out of his kidneys, and all the other grisly things from that song. Eddie had seen enough Camels leap in the air, only to stall and land with a sickening explosion, or worst of all tip forward, shattering the propeller and engine housing and mangling the pilot . . . it was all too easy to do.
    He felt the tail lift. This was the trickiest part. Keeping her level for a few seconds more. His eyes darted down to the speedometer. It was at 70 mph. He pulled back the stick and the jolting stopped as he parted company with the ground. Immediately, his anxiety vanished. He climbed to the low cloud base, keen to break out into the vast blue domain above. He could feel